Archangel’s Shadows (Guild Hunter #7)(62)
Author: Nalini Singh

“Your phone beeped,” he said, his eyes slumberous and his arm around her waist. “That’s probably what woke you.”

Reaching for the phone, she turned into his embrace so that he was holding her from behind, his chest pressed to her back. “It’s from the Guild computer team. About Felicity Johnson.”

“Mmm?”

The low, rumbling sound made her smile before she had to return to the ugliness of what had been done to their victim. “They can track her up to about twelve months ago, through a number of low-income jobs, but she falls off the grid after that. No tax return, no insurance payments, no unemployment benefits.”

“Pass me my phone.”

“Lazy. It’s on your side of the bed.”

He bit her shoulder. “Don’t poke the gator.”

Laughing, she twisted to get the phone . . . and he suckled the tip of her breast into his mouth. She gasped, fell back. “Tricky.”

A proud smirk, his hand sliding up her rib cage. “Always.” Taking the phone, he made a call.

His hair was tumbled, his eyes still a little sleepy, his voice languid. And he was hers. He knew everything and he chose to be hers. It was a gift she’d hold on to with every ounce of determination in her soul.

“Tower personnel hit the same roadblock?” she asked after he hung up.

“Oui.” He put his arm around her again. “It seems we must solve this the old-fashioned way.”

She went to reply when his phone rang again. This time, whatever he heard made him frown, come to total wakefulness. “I have to leave to deal with a Tower matter,” he said after hanging up. “I’ll call you after it’s done.” A hard kiss, his hand stroking her body again.

It made unknown things wrench in her to watch the door close behind him a bare two minutes later. She’d never thought of herself as a woman who needed anyone, but maybe that had simply been because she’d never had someone who needed her in return. Already, she missed him.

A knock on the door as she was turning to head to the shower had her opening it without looking through the spy hole. She could feel Janvier on the other side. Not saying anything, he cupped her face and kissed the life out of her, one of his hands in her hair, the other roaming her body. She wrapped her own arms around his neck, pressed herself to the warm strength of him, the loose T-shirt she’d put on no impediment to his caresses.

•   •   •

“Okay,” he said when they came up for air, his chest heaving, “I really have to go now, cher.” Janvier kissed Ash again despite his words, finding it near impossible to leave her. It felt as if he were leaving half his heart behind.

“We can do this,” Ash said, her hands caressing his shoulders. “Teenagers do it all the time, right?”

“Right,” he said, though he knew as well as she that what lived between them was too old, too intense to be anything as manageable as hormonal lust. Even without a time limit, they would’ve always been a pair once they came together, more often seen together than not. “I have to go back to Club Masque.”

Ashwini’s forehead furrowed. “Why?”

“I don’t know. Report came in from Trace, was too garbled to make out much except the name of the club.” He forced himself to release her. “Do what you can about Felicity. I’ll call once I know what’s up at Masque.” This time, he made himself jog to the emergency exit and the stairs. Waiting for the elevator was what had gotten the better of his self-control the first time.

“Watch out for Khalil!” Ash called out after him.

“I will!” he yelled back.

However, when he reached Masque—after a hurried stop at the Tower to pick up his kukris—he discovered it wasn’t Khalil who was the threat. Trace was outside the club, a blood-soaked cloth being held to his throat by Adele. Scarlet drops dotted the snow despite the club owner’s efforts to stanch the flow.

“I’m fine,” the slender male said when Janvier reached him, his voice still a little wet with blood. “Situation inside—vamp named Rupert’s in full bloodlust and pumped up so he’s stronger than he should be.” Coughing up blood on the snow, Trace waved Adele and her cloth away. The claw marks on his throat said he’d come close to having his spine ripped out, but Trace was old enough that he’d survive.

“Did you call the Tower?”

Trace shook his head, dark green eyes pained but cogent. “It’s only one vamp, and I knew you and Naasir could take him, since we managed to trap him inside. Naasir’s on his way.”

It was a good call on Trace’s part, with the Tower’s resources so strained. “Casualties or hostages?”

“The club was mostly empty,” Adele said, taking a bottle of blood from a curvy Hispanic woman who’d run down the street with a box full of them, her indoor outfit of sleek black pants and blue velvet vest over a white lace shirt making it clear she was a local in the Quarter. “Trace, drink.”

As the vampire drank in an effort to speed up his healing, Adele continued to speak, the ordinarily flawless cream of her skin splotchy. “Only people left inside were the ones in the private rooms, and they were locked automatically inside those rooms when I activated the alarm for trouble on the floor.”

“That’s not good.” Janvier slipped out his kukris, the curved blades an extension of his body.

“No.” Adele gave Trace another bottle of blood. “There are mortals trapped in those rooms, and you know how quickly bloodlust can spread. Khalil had a look in his eye I didn’t like last night—that’s why I was up and watching the monitors myself, with Trace for company.”

Rupert. The name finally penetrated.

Merde.

“His woman,” Janvier said. “A pretty, plump brunette?” He searched his memory for her name. “Lacey.”

“Dead,” Trace answered, wiping the back of his hand over his mouth. “He tore her apart in front of us, did it under the sheets—looked like he was going down on her. Must’ve put his hand over her mouth to stop her screams.”

“We weren’t paying attention to him.” Adele’s distress was open, the club owner oddly softhearted for one running such an establishment. “I mean, it was Rupert. Worst kink he has is staying in the Masque rooms when he knows they’re monitored. A little exhibitionism, that was his thing. He never hurt his women; and this one, he adored. It was their first night being intimate.”